This portrait would be for her alone.
* * *
“Captain…?”
Jules entered the infirmary at a brisk walk and didn't stop, forcing the nurse to side-step and follow her. “You haven't seen me,” she stated quietly, heading for the small room Tom had been given for recovery.
In the last two days, Jules had become a constant fixture in the medical centre. That is, when she wasn't on constant teleconferences with the bigwigs as they debated ad nauseum on what needed to be done, who would live where and… Yadda yadda yadda. She wouldn't admit it but she'd zoned out until Anisimov had quietly nudged her foot with his boot.
“Ma'am?”
“For the next two hours, you haven't seen me,” Jules repeated as she stopped in front of Tom's door. “Unless it's an emergency, all right?”
The nurse, Lieutenant Winchester, finally understood and she shook her head with a shrug. “Captain who?”
Jules winked and slipped into Tom's room. The door slid shut, leaving her in dim lighting. She could still make out a clear path to the bed and Tom's sleeping form stretched out on it. His peaceful sleep belied the seriousness of his injuries. The acidic phlegm (the term alone made her gag), had eaten through the Shark Captain's body armour and into his skin, burning through the subdermal layer to reach his lungs. It was saying something that the least of his injuries were the broken bones he sustained tangling with Mama Sub.
By the time, the CMO got to him, he was already in shock and Whelan had stated it was only his armour that saved Tom Merrick's life.
Don't go there, Jules, she told herself. Kicking off her boots, she tugged her slate free of its pocket and slid it onto the table beside the bed. Carefully, she climbed in, into the spot she'd slept in for the last day, whenever she'd been able to.
Propping her chin on a fist, Jules softly pressed the back of her free hand against Tom's cheek before leaning in to gently kiss his chin. Two days' worth of beard scratched her lips but Jules didn't mind. She was just happy he was breathing on his own, save for an oxygen cannula stretched across his face. Bandages covered his broad chest, where the subdermal skin had been repaired and then covered with a regen product.
Settling back cautiously, Jules slid her hand into his uninjured one and closed her eyes. Two deep breaths later, she was sound asleep.
* * *
When Tom Merrick woke up an hour later, he almost thought he just surfaced from an all-night bender which somehow culminated with a shag he couldn't remember. For starters, he felt like shit. Everything ached. There was pain. His mouth was dry and his memory foggy. Then there was the unfamiliarity of the place. How many times had he awoken and wondered where the fuck he was? Finally, though this bit was pleasant, was the warm body pressed against him.
Until he tilted his head to see who she or he was, (don't ask, don't tell), and realised it was Jules.
Suddenly, he remembered everything with blinding clarity. Babel, sky crabs, mulks and subs, the violence and the losses, the gorgeous lavender sky and green tinged clouds and the woman he kissed with the moonlight bathing their faces.
The woman who was still here, despite his shit for brains.
Looking down at her, she was resplendent in her beauty as she slept next to him. He studied the lines on her face, the curl of her lashes, the soft rise and fall of her body as she snoozed. She fit so perfectly next to him he had to wonder how he ever managed without her until this point. Perhaps it explained why he felt invigorated, even lying in what he knew now to be Medical, with tubes sticking out of him and fresh wounds marking his body.
Before Babel, he'd been broken and while he wasn't magically fixed, Tom recognised he was on the mend. Because of Jules. Because he felt lightning struck when she smiled at him. At him. A junk-yard dog of a kid with a drunk for an old man. She knew his record and still crawled into the bed with him. Strewth, would he ever measure up and be the man she thought he was? He didn't feel like it right now, not when Lisa's screams still haunted his sleep, but he'd get there. It was like the universe was giving him one last shot, putting Jules in his path.
Tom studied her sleeping form, memorizing every bit. Earn this, the universe was saying. He intended to. There would be nightmares and shrinks. Normally a career soldier like himself would balk at the suggestion, but he'd do it. If only so the universe didn't take her away.
He settled back on the bed but realized he couldn't sleep without getting a sitrep. He glanced at Jules. Like hell, he would wake her. Something blipped quietly and he focused on it, realizing someone's slate, maybe hers, was on the bedside table. His mind might have been mostly alert, his body was still sore and his movements were slow. He managed to pull the table until the slate was within arm's reach. Once in his hands, he logged into his own profile.
Rhys had dutifully sent him every report regarding the expedition, even though the man probably didn't expect him to read it until he was discharged from Medical. Tom skimmed them, getting the gist. The mission was a success, even if it was a pyrrhic one. They'd lost people and, with a heavy heart, Tom noted Dee Sheridan from Beta Squad was on the list. Like Dupree, she'd been killed during the retreat from the temple.
Despite the deaths, Tom believed they weren't in vain. They'd spent twenty-four hours on the surface and look what they found? The sky crabs, the nafs and the twigas. More importantly, the expedition gathered enough intel about the valley to conclude it might be the place to settle. Once it was clear that Wormandra and her offspring were well and truly gone.
Olivia Valley (that soothed an ache in his heart he hadn't realized was there) was large enough to establish the colony a good distance away from the ruined city. As Tom and Jules first reasoned, the mountains on either side sheltered the valley from the worst of the storms generated by the sky crabs and Hanae River, (bloody hell, what was in his IV to make him this weepy?), was large enough to support their numbers.
Naturally, fortifications would be needed, if only to deter the mulks from deciding the humans were a new delicacy. Despite all of that, despite the dangers, Tom still recognized that it was paradise to ten thousand people desperately in need of blue (greenish in this case) sky, fresh air and most of all, hope.
Logging off, Tom slid the Slate onto the table and settled back against the bed. Jules shifted slightly, her hand searching his, so he caught it and twined their fingers together. They'd talk later, exchange war stories; but right now, they both needed to rest.
They had paid for it in blood but now he and Jules, and the remains of humanity, had a lifetime to enjoy.
Dear reader,
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Savage World Page 31
